The potential of AI in healthcare is now widely recognised. The next challenge is more complex: how do we bring these possibilities into clinical practice? Technology company Indicia and exquAIro share a common interest in this question. Through a five-year sponsorship, Indicia supports exquAIro’s mission to develop AI expertise within the healthcare sector and accelerate its practical application.
Based in Tilburg, Indicia has been working at the intersection of data, technology and AI since 1996. The company helps organisations in sectors including healthcare, government and financial services drive digital innovation. It now employs around 250 professionals. For founder and CEO Carlo Korssen, supporting exquAIro represents more than a contribution to society.
“What appeals to me is that exquAIro puts expertise directly in the hands of those who need it. Rather than bringing technology into healthcare from the outside, exquAIro trains healthcare professionals themselves to work with AI, big data and machine learning. This gives them the tools to initiate new breakthroughs based on their own expertise.”
According to Marnix Bügel, co-founder and board member of exquAIro, this approach aligns with a development that will shape the next phase of AI in healthcare. In recent years, much of the focus has been on developing and demonstrating new AI applications. The emphasis is now shifting towards the conditions needed to implement these applications in clinical practice.
Bügel explains: “More and more AI applications are emerging in healthcare, but getting them implemented in practice remains difficult. Regulation is part of the challenge, but so are the ability to execute and the need to bring in expertise from other disciplines.”
From Fragmented Data to Practical AI Applications
One of these challenges concerns data. Medical data is spread across different hospitals and institutions. For many AI applications, the ability to combine and use data responsibly is essential. This is important not only for developing models, but also for validating them against sufficiently large and representative populations.
This is where Indicia’s expertise aligns closely with exquAIro’s mission. “The medical sector in the Netherlands has something of a data infarction,” says Bügel. “There are enormous opportunities for AI, but fragmented data can make them difficult to realise.”
Indicia brings experience in data management, data aggregation and secure AI applications. One example is Octavius, a platform the company developed that allows users to work with different AI platforms through a single interface, while anonymising data and users.
For Korssen, this combination of innovation and responsibility is essential. “You shouldn’t have to choose between the power of progress on the one hand and reliability and security on the other.”
This expertise could prove valuable in addressing challenges emerging from exquAIro and its network in the coming years. Bügel points, for example, to the secure integration of data from multiple hospitals, both regionally and around specific diseases. “For rare diseases, collaboration between institutions may be necessary to obtain sufficient data. A broader dataset is often essential for validating AI models as well.”
A Partnership for the Next Phase
The partnership between Indicia and exquAIro is very much a two-way exchange. Indicia contributes technological expertise and implementation experience. exquAIro brings in-depth knowledge of AI and the healthcare context, alongside a growing network of healthcare professionals and researchers. Korssen sees this as a valuable exchange of expertise.
The sponsorship is also significant for exquAIro because, as a non-profit organisation, it relies on partners to help fulfil its mission. Bügel emphasises the importance of the timing: “The first organisations to support a new initiative are incredibly important. We are therefore very grateful to Indicia for placing its trust in exquAIro, particularly at this early stage.”
Ultimately, the ambition extends beyond the partnership between two organisations.
exquAIro aims to contribute to an ecosystem in which AI knowledge is not only developed but also translated into applications that advance healthcare. With Indicia as a partner, this ambition gains not only financial support, but also technological expertise and entrepreneurial drive.
As Korssen puts it: “When you support an organisation that can develop the knowledge and tools to generate new insights that may ultimately help patients, it’s almost impossible not to get involved.”
Marnix Bügel (left) and Carlo Korssen